Existential philosophy and psychotherapy at the Weekend UNi 2018

Existential Philosophy and Psychotherapy
Emmy van Deurzen
Weekend University 2018.
@Emmy van Deurzen 2018

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Emmy van Deurzen
 MPhil, MPsych, PHD, CPsychol, FBPsS
•Visiting Professor Middlesex University -UK
•Director Dilemma Consultancy
•Director Existential Academy
•Principal New School of Psychotherapy
and Counselling - London

16
Books

3d edition of Existential Counselling and
Psychotherapy in practice or
Everyday Mysteries, 2nd edition
Existential Therapy: Distinctive Features

What is existential
therapy?
 Existential therapy is a philosophical
method of psychotherapy, which
focuses on the clarification of human
existence in order to enable a person
to engage with problems in living in a
creative, active and reflective manner
to find new meaning and purpose.

What is life for?
What are the meanings that set us on fire ?

Get perspective and find
purpose and direction

Making sense of meaning
 Life is not simplistic or binary, but complex
 Neither dualism nor materialism nor idealism
 Everything is multi-layered and connected
 There are physical, social, personal and
ideological or spiritual aspects to everything and
tensions everywhere
 Not just perspectivism or dual aspect theory or
epiphenomenalism
 Dimensionalism

All is connected and
layered in the universe

We are never but an aspect, an element, a
part of a wider context. Relationship is
essential to our very survival and
inspires everything we do. (Deurzen,
1997: 95)

Kierkegaard
 Most people are subjective toward themselves
and objective toward all others, frightfully
objective sometimes –
but the task is precisely to be objective toward
oneself and subjective toward all others.
 (Kierkegaard, 1998: 72)

Existential Therapy
 Talking about your troubles is only helpful if you
can talk through them in constructive dialogue
taking you beyond blame and shame.
 No system of psychopathology
 Focus on Problems in Living: ontonomy
 Philosophical view of human existence and the
wisdom of several millennia of thinking

Focus on the
HUMAN CONDITION
Understanding human difficulties, conflicts,
paradoxes, dilemmas, contradictions, predicaments
How can we approach the human struggle so that it
does not lead to the experience of depression,
anxiety and psychopathology?@Emmy van Deurzen 2018

Existential Therapy
 Working with philosophical methods,
amongst which phenomenology,
dialectics, maieutics, hermeneutics
and heuristic methods.@Emmy van Deurzen 2018

Directive or non
directive?
 The existential therapist is purposeful
(directional) rather than directive. Also direct.
 Non-directiveness denies autonomy and can
easily lead to stagnation
 A productive therapeutic relationship will be
challenging to both people
 Clients will value a therapist who is willing to
stand with them, but who can also teach
them something new about life

 Man’s task is simple:
he should cease letting
his existence be a
thoughtless accident
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science

Buber’s encounter
 The interhuman: das Zwischenmenschlichen; the
in-between is where real communication takes
place (Buber, Between Man and Man, 1929).
 All actual life is encounter (ibid: 62)
 This is where truth is found.
 In inter-subjectivity we create the world in which
we live together: I-It or I-Thou.

Paul Ricoeur’s dialogue
 The only way to achieve some form of knowledge is
to come to it gradually through dialogue.
 This involves me in exploring both the archaeology,
or the landscapes of the past, and the teleology, or
the landscapes of the future, as you imagine them.
 In terms of temporality there is a continuous altering
of meaning.

Sense and meaning

De Saussure and
structuralism: semiology

Meanings relate to each other and
change: difference (Derrida)

Memory, imagination and
dreams: reconnecting

Onto-dynamics
 Learning to live in line with the laws of life
 Paradox, conflict, difficulty and dilemmas are our daily
companions
 When crisis comes we need to have the courage to
descend to rock bottom
 Search for truth

How to create value and
meaning?
 Through committed and engaged action
 Step by step
 Diligently proceeding no matter what
challenges come on your path
 Steady progress comes from undaunted
focus on your project
 Flexibility and finding joy in the process
rather than aiming for success or happiness
 In friendship and collaboration with others.
 Valuing what matters

An evolutionary project
Lifeisfor
learning

Aim of existential dialogue
 Enable people to search for truth in their lives
 Help them live passionately and compassionately
 Finding inner authority: think for yourself
 Greater understanding of the human condition
 Purpose and direction: intentionality
 Paradox, dialectic: freedom, responsibility, life, death
 Find talents, strength, vulnerability
 Past, present, future, temporality

Learning the facts
 Going beyond the findings of psychology@Emmy van Deurzen 2018

Positive
psychology

How do we experience
our world?
 We pick up messages, moods and atmospheres.
We change the tone and affect the world in turn.
We interpret meanings.

We are lenses, prisms, the I is like the
eye
We refract light/life
 We transform what we receive and either reflect
it, absorb it, stop it, ward it off or pass it on in
tact.
 We can also learn to magnify and illuminate it,
refracting all different facets (phenomenology)
 We attribute, receive, transform and create
meanings

Hedonism versus virtue
ethics

Socrates and Plato

Socrates: thinking about meaning
The unreflective life is not worth living

Using philosophy to get
out of the cave

Dare to explore the cave
and make new
discoveries?

Aristotle
 Achieving certain meanings and values
 Eudaimonia: the good life : virtue ethics
 Should benefit the community at large rather than only the
individual
 Virtues of orderliness, deliberateness and clarity

Aristotelian practice
 Pupils are taught to separate true beliefs from false
beliefs and to modify and transform their passions
accordingly
 Winnowing and sifting opinions
 Virtue ethics: live in line with the demon: force,
power, spirit.

Epicureans
 The Epicureans seek to treat human suffering by
removing corrupting desires and by eliminating pain
and disturbance (ataraxia).
 Adjust values retaining only those that are attainable
and may bring pleasure.
 Relinquish the unobtainable and adjust expectations
to what is realistic, so that with a slight of hand we
can obtain what we think we want.

Skeptics
Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360-275 B.C.)
 The Epicurean view is that pleasure is the only good
and we are taught to adjust our needs so as to
guarantee the procurement of pleasure from small
natural resources.
 Skeptics: the only way to stop pain and suffering is to
simply not believe in or desire anything.
 So whilst Epicureans try to get rid of false beliefs, the
Skeptics want to get rid of all beliefs.

Stoic goal
 For the Stoics the pupil's goal is to become his own
teacher and pupil
 In order to improve a person's life the soul must be
exercised everyday, for instance by the use of logic
and poetry
 The flourishing life affirms certain meanings:
wisdom, courage, justice, temperance
 The means: detachment and self-control : apathy

Stoics: overcoming weakness
 Ordering of the self and soul
 Exercise of the mind
 Lack of moral fibre and emotional weakness
 Everything is connected, but Stoics consider that
different temperaments need different approaches
and that there is a critical moment (kairos) for
change :
 Zeno: virtue is its own reward

Spinoza-ethics
 Prop.VI. The mind has greater power over the
emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as
it understands all things as necessary
 Consider under a species of eternity what is
actually the case and work with that

Spinoza: the universe is governed by
necessary laws which when
respected and understood allow us
freedom: determinism<>contingency

Everything has an opposite: paradox is fundamental
you need to have known loss to be able to love, you need to have
suffered to learn to be happy, noise helps you appreciate silence,
absence shows you the value of presence

Making sense of life
High
Big
Far
Good
Low
Small
Near
Bad

Energy is the flow between
two poles
Source: kidzoneweather.com

Dialectics
 Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
 Human evolution proceeds with constant conflict
and forward movement in overcoming a
previous state.
 Paradoxes, conflicts and dilemmas are
integrated and gone beyond.
 Perhaps this is the true purpose of life and
suffering: to learn, surpass and evolve.

Dialectics: working with tension,
dilemma, conflict, opposition,
polarities, paradox
 Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
 Human evolution proceeds with constant
conflict and forward movement in
overcoming a previous states.
 Paradoxes and dilemmas
are integrated
and gone beyond.

Transcendence
Thesis Antithesis
Synthesis
Dialectics

future
Thesis: my view
(past )
Antithesis: your view
(present)
Dialectics:
transcendence in space and time
Synthesis:
a wider view

Tensions and paradoxes at all levels
World Umwelt Mitwelt Eigenwelt Uberwelt
Physical Nature:
Life/
Death
Things:
Pleasure/
Pain
Body:
Health/
Illness
Cosmos:
Harmony/
Chaos
Social Society:
Love/
Hate
Others:
Dominance/Submi
ssion
Ego:
Acceptance/
Rejection
Culture:
Belonging/
Isolation
Personal Person:
Identity/Freed
om
Me:
Perfection/
Imperfection
Self:
Integrity/
Disintegration
Consciousness
:
Confidence/
Confusion
Spiritual: Infinite:
Good/
Evil
Ideas:
Truth/
Untruth
Spirit:
Meaning/
Futility
Conscience:
Right/
Wrong

Understanding
connections.
 Helping persons to understand their difficulties
aims at exploring as much of the web of their
lives as is possible, focussing not on one
particular line but on the connections between
as many lines as show themselves.
 (Hans Cohn, in Existential Perspectives,
2005:226)

Framework
 Asking the BIG QUESTIONS (ontological questions)
 What does it mean to be alive?
 Why is there something rather than nothing?
 How should I act and be in relation to other people?
 How can I live a worthwhile life?
 What will happen after I die?
 Life questions us and we respond. Response-ability

We cannot avoid all danger and all
problems and need to learn to cope with
adversity and difficulties: life is a challenge
 It is by going down into the abyss that we
recover the treasures of life.
 Where you stumble lies your treasure
 Joseph Campbell

Existential Authors
Philosophers
of
Freedom
Phenomeno-
logists
Existentialists Post-
Structuralists
Existential-
Humanists
Sðren
Kierkegaard
1813-1855
Franz Brentano
1838-1917
Jean Paul
Sartre
1905-1980
Michel
Foucault
1926-1984
Martin Buber
1878-1965
Friedrich
Nietzsche
1844-1900
Edmund
Husserl
1859-1938
Maurice
Merleau Ponty
1908-1961
Emmanuel
Levinas
1905-1995
Paul Tillich
1886-1965
Arthur
Schopenhauer
1788-1860
Karl Jaspers
1883-1969
Simone de
Beauvoir
1908-1986
Paul Ricoeur
1913-2005
Rollo May
1909-1994
Fyodor
Dostoyevski
1821-1881
Martin
Heidegger
1889-1976
Gabriel Marcel
1889-1973
Jacques
Lacan
1901-1981
Hannah
Arendt
1906-1975
Karl Marx
1818-1883
Max Scheler
1874-1928
Albert Camus
1913-1960
Jacques
Derrida
1930-2004
Abraham
Maslow
1908-1970

Existential Philosophers
 Kierkegaard Nietzsche Husserl Jaspers Heidegger
Sartre de Beauvoir Buber Camus Merleau Ponty
Foucault

Existential Practitioners
 Ludwig Binswanger: 1881-1966.
 Karl Jaspers: 1883-1969.
 Paul Tillich: 1886-1965.
 Medard Boss: 1904-1990.
 Viktor Frankl: 1905-1997.
 Rollo May: 1909-1994.
 Ronald Laing: 1927-1989.

 Binswanger Boss Frankl
 May Laing

Early existential
Psychiatrists
Daseinsanalysis Humanistic-
Existential
Logotherapy
- Existential
Analysis
European
Existential
Phenomenological
Ludwig
Binswanger
1881-1966
Medard Boss
1904-1990
Rollo May
1909-1994
Viktor Frankl
1905-1997
Ronald D. Laing
1927-1989
Karl Jaspers
1883-1969
Gion Condrau
1919-2006
James Bugental
1915-2008
Joseph Fabry
1909 - 1999
Hans Cohn
1916-2004
Eugene
Minkowski
1885-1972
Alice Holzey-Kunz
1943-
Irvin Yalom
1931-
Paul Wong
1937-
Ernesto Spinelli
1949-
Jakob Moreno
1890-1974
Eric Craig
1944-
Kirk Schneider
1956-
Alfried Längle
1951-
Emmy van
Deurzen
1951-@Emmy van Deurzen 2018

Attunement to what is:
not just science

An educational project
Lifeisfor
learning

Engagement is key
 We go towards the world or keep away
 We flee, freeze, stay in place, or approach,
loving or fighting with the world around us
 We do this not only with other people
 We do it with objects, animals, humans, our
selves and also with ideas, expectations, hopes,
fears and many other things
 We are always in relationship and are more or
less available and engaged

Phenomenology and
existential therapy
 We are always making sense of the world, we can never be free
of our assumptions.
 Existential therapy is a phenomenological research project for
both therapist and client.
 It needs to comply with rigorous standards of philosophical
research and verification as well as with the requirements of
human interaction and encounter.
 In order to get a more accurate picture of the world we need to
understand how we make sense of it.
 By attending – just noticing, describing – not explaining, and
not pre-judging, we can get a better idea of our assumptions
and worldview

Method: Edmund Husserl’s
Phenomenology
1859-1938
 Phenomenology: appearance<>essence
 Wesenschau: to things themselves.
 Intentionality (Franz Brentano)
 Intuition: question natural attitude.
 Knowledge begins with experience
 Bracketing assumptions, epoche

Intentionality
 Cogito(subject):transcendental reduction
 Noesis(process):phenomenological
reduction
 Noema(object):eidetic reduction

Phenomenological Method
I. Phenomenological reduction
 Noesis
II. Eidetic reduction
 Noema
III. Transcendental reduction
 Cogito

I.Phenomenological reduction
1. Noesis.
2. Epoche: suspend assumptions.
3. Description.
4. Horizontalization.
5. Equalization.
6. Verification.

II. Eidetic Reduction
1. Noema.
2. Abschattungen:profiles.
3. Wesenschau: looking for essences.
4. Genetic constitution (vs. static).
5. Universals beyond the properties.

III. Transcendental reduction
 1. Cogito.
 2. Transcendental ego.
 3. Solipsism overcome.
 4. Horizon of intentionality.
 5. Self as point zero.
 4. Transcendental intersubjectivity.

We have to open up to
meaning, not hide from it

Work with bias.
 Become aware of your own and your client’s bias:
outlook, assumptions, beliefs, prejudice, blind
spots, values: worldviews.

Martin Heidegger:
 Moved to Freiburg in 1906
 Read Brentano On the manifold meaning of Being
 Studied theology
 Read Husserl
 Doctorate on Doctrine of Judgement in Psychology
 1916 qualified and started working with Husserl
 1923 associate prof at Marburg
 1927 Being and Time published
 1929 what is metaphysics?
 1933 Rector of Freiburg
 1934 resigned as rector
 1944 moved from Uni
 1946 dismissed from chair
 After this many new publications

Martin Heidegger: and
psychotherapy
 Zollikon seminars
 “Daseinsanalysis” Medard Boss

Heidegger’s oeuvre
 Ontology: study of Being
 Being and Time (Sein und Zeit)
 Dasein: phenomenology of human existence
 The Turn: language, poetry, thinking and Being
 Critique of nihilism of technology
 Worked with Medard Boss: Zollikon lectures
 Pupil of Husserl, colleague of Jaspers, inspired Sartre,
Merleau Ponty

Major publications
 1927 Being and Time (Sein und Zeit)
 1928 Basic problems of phenomenology
 1930 What is metaphysics? On the essence of truth
 1935 Introduction to Metaphysics
 1946 The end of philosophy
 1947 Letter on humanism
 1949 the Turning
 1949 the Pathway
 1954 Question concerning Technology
 1951 What is called Thinking?
 1955 Discourse on thinking
 1962 On Time and Being
 1987 Zollikon lectures

Thrown in time
 Dasein: being there. Ecstasies: past-present-
future. Historicity.
 Being-in-the-world: Thrownness (Geworfenheit).
 My being is always mine. I am the being for
whom being is an issue.
 Care (Sorge) the world matters to me.
 The being whose being matters to it.
 I always live in time: no longer and not yet:
between birth and death.

Existentialia
 3 Existentialia: modes of being
 1.Befindlichkeit: state of mind, disposition: being
situated.
 2.Understanding (Verstand, v. Vernunft)
 3.Discourse (Rede)
 Stimmung: attunement

Anxiety as source of
energy
Anxiety is life energy rather than a symptom of illness
Anxiety individualizes. This individualization
brings Dasein back from its falling, and makes
manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity
are possibilities of its Being. (Heidegger 1927:191

Heidegger’s:
What is called thinking?
 The task of living was to be authentically
resolute in anticipating death, but now it is in
letting be and releasing ourselves towards
Being and freedom
 Allow yourself to own your life and the truth
of existence in Er-eignis and Gelassenheit
 We have to make room for our life and for
the thanking, which is a deep contemplative
thinking: a welcoming of what actually is
 But we have to think in solitude and cannot
penetrate each other’s solitude

FOURFOLD is ONE
 The big bang in which Being explodes into EARTH,
WORLD, MEN and GODS, also creates the time-space
in which the fragments are related to each other
 (Heidegger LXV 311, 485).

Heidegger’s Ereignis:
re-owning
 Original thanking is the thanks owed for being.
That thanks alone gives rise to thinking of the
kind we know as retribution and reward in the
good and bad sense. (Heidegger 1954:141)

Reclaiming TIME-SPACE
 Heidegger’s Zeit-raum: time-space, is not the same
as the space-time of physicists. Time-space is the
point where space and time come together before
the big-bang and they have their origin in a common
root.
 It opens up the Spielraum, elbowroom or play-space
in which we find the truth of being.

Multi dimensional time
 Past
 Present
 Future
 Eternity
 Timelessness
 Parallel universes

Getting to know yourself
in past, present, future

Structural Existential
Analysis In time (care)
We are
1. in the Past: as having been: forgetting or regretting Gewesenheit,
repetition
2. In the Present: as being: waiting, rushing Gegenwart, Dasein, Being-
with-in-the-world
3. In the Future: as going toward, longing or dreading Zukunft,
anticipation, Being-towards Death
4. In Temporality: as Being eternal or infinite Zeit und Sein Ereignis

Structural Existential
Analysis (SEA)
in space
 Umwelt : way of being in the physical world in
relation to environment: sensations.
 Mitwelt : relation to others and what are the
interactions: feelings.
 Eigenwelt : Relation to self: thoughts.
 Uberwelt : Relation to ideas and meaning: intuitions.

Dialogue of the
therapeutic relationship
Being
therapist
Client’s life
client

Project
 Man is characterized above all by his going beyond a
situation and by what he succeeds in making of what he
has been made.
 This going beyond we find at the very root of the human-
in need. (scarcity)
 This is what we call the project. (elementary objective,
original intention)
(Sartre, Search for a Method:91)

The fear of truth is the fear of freedom
Sartre’s Truth and Existence, 1989:34.
 ‘
 Being open to true vision is to free ourselves: but we
need to find our path, our destiny and our direction
 Reflected feelings help us to find meaning.

Simone de Beauvoir
an Ethics of Ambiguity
 Life is preoccupied in both perpetuating itself
and in transcending itself. If all it does is to
maintain itself than life is only not dying.
 I wish that every human life might be pure
transparent freedom.

Simone de Beauvoir
the Mandarins (625)
 ‘You can’t lead a proper life in a
society which isn’t proper, in which
every way you turn, you are always
caught’
 You can’t draw a straight line in a
curved space.

What meanings do we
want to retrieve?

How to live? What is truth? What
is the ultimate value of life?
 The values of psychotherapists determine to
some extent how they work and what they aim
for.
 Cure/ healing
 Coping/ support
 Cognitive correction
 Understanding
 Analysis/Insight
 Autonomy

Different sorts of
psychotherapy

Our freedom is squashed by
circumstances and others

Nested constrictions
surround us
Nature
Culture-ideology
Society-state
Government-
politics
Family
Individual

Frankl’s way to
meaning
•Experiential values: what we take from the
world.
•Creative values: what we give to the world.
•Attitudinal values : the way we deal with
suffering.

We need COURAGE
Tillich’s Courage to Be:
 Courage is the universal self-affirmation of
one’s Being in the presence of the threat of
non-Being(Tillich 1952:163).

Integrating non being:
Paul Tillich: 1886-1965

Quest for Happiness

Meaning not happiness
Baumeister (1991) Meanings of Life
 Baumeister concluded that there are four basic needs
for meaning:
1. Need for efficacy (physical)
2. Need for value (social)
3. Need for self-worth (personal)
4. Need for purpose (spiritual)
 It is the process of going in the general direction of
these four objectives that makes for a good life.

There is no abstract ethics. There is only an ethics in
a situation and therefore it is concrete.
Learning to live is a moral
struggle

A limited freedom
 This is the limit I would today
accord to freedom: the small
movement which makes of a totally
conditioned social being someone
who does not render back
completely what his conditioning
has given him.
 (Sartre, New Left Review interview,
1969:45).

Multi dimensional
Existential Space
Physical space
Social space
Personal space
Spiritual space

Spiritual:
Good/Evil
Intuitions, values, beliefs, purpose, meaning.
Worldview/Ideas.
Personal:
Strength/Weakness
Thoughts, memories, identity, freedom.
Selfhood/Me.
Social:
Love/Hate
Feelings, relations, belonging, acknowledgement.
Communication/Others.
Physical:
Life/Death
Sensations, actions, environment, body, things.
Survival/World.
Dimensions of existence

Layers of a person’s life.
4.Physical: Umwelt
3.Social: Mitwelt
2.Personal: Eigenwelt
1.Spiritual: Uberwelt

Paradoxes of human
existence
Deurzen and Adams
challenge gain loss
Physical Death and
pain
Life to the full Unlived life or
constant fear
Social Loneliness
and
rejection
Understand
and be
understood
Bullying or being
bullied
Personal Weakness
and failure
Strength and
stamina
Narcissism or self
destruction
Spiritual Meaning-
Lessness
and futility
Finding an
ethics to live by
Fanaticism or apathy

Overview of conflicts, challenges and paradoxes on four dimensions
World Umwelt : where? Mitwelt : how? Eigenwelt: who? Uberwelt: why?
Physical:
survival
Nature:
Life/
Death
Things:
Pleasure/
Pain
Body:
Health/
Illness
Cosmos:
Harmony/
Chaos
Social:
affiliation
Society:
Love/
Hate
Others:
Dominance/Sub
mission
Ego:
Acceptance/
Rejection
Culture:
Belonging/
Isolation
Personal:
identity
Person:
Identity/Freedom
Me:
Perfection/
Imperfection
Self:
Integrity/
Disintegration
Consciousness:
Confidence/
Confusion
Spiritual:
meaning
Infinite:
Good/
Evil
Ideas:
Truth/
Untruth
Spirit:
Meaning/
Futility
Conscience:
Right/
Wrong

Existential intelligence
 Embracing existence in its contradictions and rising to its
challenges
 Realizing that there is no such thing as a perfect human
being or everlasting happiness, or an ideal situation
 Learning to be resilient and flexible enough to negotiate
on-going paradoxes
 Facing existential challenges in a personal and creative
manner that allows for dialectic and surpassing
 Grappling with tensions, conflicts and dilemmas and
slowly learning to make sense of it

What has been the worst, most
unsettling experience of your
life?
 How did it happen?
 What was it like while it happened?
 What was your identity before, during, after?
 How did it change you?
 What did you learn?
 How did it change your trajectory, way of life?

Project: active
transcendence
 Man is characterized above all by his going
beyond a situation and by what he succeeds in
making of what he has been made.
 This is what we call the project.
(Sartre, Search for a Method:91)

Adaptability, flexibility
neurons, like us: making new
connections: organizing

Making sense: using the
prefrontal lobes

Post traumatic growth
Tedeschi and Calhoun, mid
nineties
 90% of survivors report some specific growth,
like renewed appreciation of life.
 Not just recovery, or survival but thriving.
 Beyond resilience.
 Learning to be creative
 Meichenbaum: only 5-10% of those traumatised
suffer PTSD
 Move beyond pre traumatic level of functioning.

Finding your inner
balance
Physical: safety, sleep, food,
comfort, survival, healing, repair,
recovery
Social: strong
relationships,
allow and
understand
emotions,
belonging,
caring, sharing,
support
Psychological: clear thinking,
making sense, analysis,
understanding, new perspective,
taking charge, responsibility,
character building
Spiritual: review
values, new
vision, trust,
transcendence,
dialectic,
stronger beliefs,
meaning,
purpose

The art of living is to be equal to all
our emotions and experiences rather
than to select and cultivate only the
safe or pleasant ones
There are many opposites of love:
Indifference, hate, suffocation, and most of
all: fear

Sisyphus: Life as a futile
uphill struggle
There is but one truly serious philosophical
problem and that is … whether life is or is
not worth living. (Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus)

We need problems and
challenges: to learn and evolve
 Camus:
 In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was
in me an invincible summer
 Happiness is nothing except the simple harmony
between a man and the life he leads

Meaning found not
despite but because of
adversity

Life’s events are grist for
the mill: nurturance

Stages of life: Kierkegaard’s idea
of progress
 Vegetative; sentient ; conscious ; knowing ; self-
knowing; aware of self awareness: autonomous.
(determined: past based)
 Aesthetic: feeling (being absorbed by the
present)
 Ethical – Ascetic: thinking (having control over
the present: planning the future)
 Leap of Faith: jump into abyss of eternity
 Spiritual life: retrieve inspiration: holding the
paradox finite/infinite : continuous past, present,
future : mastering time.

Reality of existence: to be
fully alive, aware as an
individual

Kierkegaard’s breathing
 Personhood is a synthesis of possibility and
necessity.
 Its continued existence is like breathing
(respiration),
which is an inhaling and exhaling.
 (Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death: 40)

Emotions are our
orientation.
 Emotions are like the weather: never none.
 They are the way we relate to the world.
 They define the mood of the moment.
 They are our atmosphere and modality.
 They tell us where we are.
 Learn to tune in rather than tune out.
 Use the emotional compass.

John Henry Fuseli’s the nightmare:
Suppression of feelings leads to dysfunction
and despair
loss of freedom: depression is often actually
about oppression or suppression
when we free ourselves: anxiety

Sartre’s emotional theory
 Embodied human existence mobilizes itself towards
or away from that which it desires or dreads.
 We can do magic in letting ourselves fall into
emotion, thus transforming the world in bad faith.
 Difference between reflective and non reflective
emotions.

Tune into the feelings and moods that
colour our worldview
 They create different atmospheres at different times.

The colour of emotion

pride
jealousy
anger-
despair
fear
sorrowshame
envy
hope-
desire
love
joy
Sadness
Low
Happiness
High
Anxiety
Excitement
Engagement
Depression
Disappointment
Disengagement
Compass of
emotions

Four ways of being with
meaning
• Loss of
meaning
• Aspire to
meaning
• Threat to
meaning
• Gain
meaning
approach fight
flightfreeze

1:Pride-confidence-arrogance
2:Jealousy-worry-vigilance
3:Anger-hate-despair
4:Fear-confusion-cowardice
5:Sorrow-misery-resignationShame-emptiness-guilt:7
Envy-curiosity-aspiration:8
Hope-desire-resolve:9
Love-courage-commitment:10
Joy-thrill-excitement:11
6. Low
Despondency
Depression
Exhilaration
Happiness
12:High
Up
gain
Down
loss
Emotional
Compass

Attunement@Emmy van Deurzen 2018

Greed
Stinginess
Frustration
Disgust
PainNeed
Craving
Excitement
Lust
Pleasure
Deprivation
Emptiness
Satisfaction
Fullness
Gain
Survival
Loss
Threat
Sensory Compass

Care
Jealousy
Anger
Fear
RejectionShame
Envy
Approval
Love
Acceptance
Isolation
Separateness
Belonging
Oneness
Engagement
Disengage
Social Compass

Superiority
Stubbornness
Defiance
Deflation
HumiliationInferiority
Anxiety
Courage
Commitment
Confidence
Imperfection
Weakness
Perfection
Strength
Success
Failure
Mental Compass

Pride
Prudence
Wrath
Resignation
DisillusionmentGuilt
Aspiration
Hope
Resoluteness
Bliss
Futility
Absurdity
Meaning
Purpose
Good
Evil
Moral Compass

Rising above your
emotions
 Above the clouds the weather is steady even
when it rains below.
 Transcending our own situation and emotions
allows us to understand our own response.

Bringing down emotional intensity:
painting the world pale or in pastel
shades

Potentiality is more than
actuality
 From project to action in our own lives.
 Plotting a route through the obstacles
 Potentiality of past as well as of the present and
future.
 Living in time: transcendence and evolution

Only lived truth and
understanding will give us deep
meanings

Taoism: Yin (moon/dark/ female)
and Yang (light/sun/male)

Chiaroscuro, claire-obscure, the
light and shade of life

In darkness we
learn about the
depth of life
The discipline of suffering, of
great suffering — do you not
know that only this discipline
has created all
enhancements of man so
far?
(Nietzsche, 1886/1990: 225)

When it is dark enough, you
can see the stars. Ralph Waldo
Emerson

Eventually: Earth Rises
again
1968 picture from Apollo mission

www.dilemmas.org
www.nspc.org.uk
www.existentialacademy.com
www.emmyvandeurzen.com
www.existentialpsychotherapy.net
www.societyofpsychotherapy.org.uk

Multiple meanings.
What does it mean to you?

Pre-reflective meanings:
beauty (aesthetic)

Rational meanings: ease
of cultivation (ethics)

Looking at the detail:
focus : leap of faith

A useful and meaningful
world

Organized personal meaning:
instrumental possession

Images capture an
atmosphere, create values

Memes: images in the mind
that create meaning

Can change your mind

Ambiguity:
Queen’s hat in parliament:

What does this mean to
you?

Or a murmuration?

Or a fire

Stronger with words

Meaning of life

Interpretations/
hermeneutics

You have to own your
life: it is your work of art

Exploring our limits and our
possibilities by tuning in to the lives
people live and set these in
perspective

Meaning is about
connections

About the way things, people,
situations or ideas fit
together: AHA! EUREKA!

We feel best when
weaving it together

We feel confused when
not connected

In therapy we trace people’s
connections, to others, objects,
memories, events, ideas etc.

We find and create
helpful patterns

People feel better if
affiliated: not just
attached

Life is more meaningful
when we feel more
connected

Undoing wrong
connections, rewiring,
reconnecting

How do we become
connected: loved?

Who can control connections but in
loss: sudden disconnection: meaning
severed.

It feels great to find a place in a
great meaningful pattern

Understanding
connections
 Helping persons to understand their difficulties
aims at exploring as much of the web of their
lives as is possible, focussing not on one
particular line but on the connections between
as many lines as show themselves.
 (Hans Cohn, in Existential Perspectives,
2005:226)

It feels dreadful and painful to
be disconnected

Art of Living: spirituality
 The art of living is about weaving the different
strands of life together into a meaningful whole
that holds us safe.
 Strands are constantly added and taken away.
 We need to tend carefully to the fabric of our
lives on a daily basis, disconnecting,
reconnecting and integrating all the time.

How to find our way in our
Existential Space
Physical, natural space
Social interpersonal space
Personal, psychological space
Spiritual, ideological space

Things are dynamic and intertwined
 multi-dimensionality in motion:creativity

connection: physical:
harmony/science

Connection: social:
affection/affiliation

Connection: personal:
Inner integrity/peace

Connection: spiritual:
truth/value

Our brains mirror the process:
working out our inner
harmony

When well connected we feel
good, energetic, intelligent,
engaged

To feel connected is also
to feel love

What is Love?
• To be intent on knowing, respecting and valuing an other
for what they actually are and can be
• Letting them be and live as fully and freely as possible,
keeping their welfare at heart, as our own, in a dedicated,
attentive and uncompromising way . I-Thou. Cherishing.
Challenging.

Love is not just a feeling
 It is an action, an attitude, an intention, a
movement, a way of being
 Love is the movement towards the other in the
spirit of care, affection, commitment, loyalty,
generosity, kindness, intimacy, tenderness,
attachment, trust and truth.

Love is a particular kind of
intentionality
 The world is not comprehensible, but it is
embraceable: through the embracing of one of
its beings. (Buber)
 There is not enough love in the world to
squander it on anything but human beings.
 Albert Camus, The Rebel, A. Bower, trans. (1956), p. 18

Existential Love
 Love is an action (Fromm)
 Not just a feeling
 We need to work at it
 It demands commitment, dedication,
devotion, caring, loyalty, understanding,
freedom
 Seeing and knowing the other and letting be
 I/Thou rather than I/It

You have to be able to
dare to be true

Truth
 The existential task is to search for truth,
actively, carefully and painstakingly, through the
experience of reflection on the human condition
in general and our own life in particular
 It is a search for what is actually the case

Onto-dynamics
 Learning to live in line with the laws of
life
 Paradox, conflict, difficulty and
dilemmas are our daily companions
 When crisis comes we need to have
the courage to descend to rock bottom
 From there we can build something
better

Exploring our limits and our
possibilities. Understanding and
getting things in perspective

Ultimately we are intertwined with the
cosmic order: the implicate order of
the universe (Bohm)

Existential therapy
 To attend to the principle of life
 Solomon’s ‘thoughtful love of life’
 Vitality at all levels of life
 What is our interaction with nature, others, self
and the ultimate?

New perspectives:
life as an adventure
 Learning to be you and living life well

The meaning of paradox

Becoming disconnected

When you are deceived:
white noise

Becoming isolated and
stupefied

Stupidity more
dangerous than malice

Stupidity is to be muted, paralysed by
lies or confusion: like a toxic fog

Banality of evil:
Hannah Arendt

Evil is what disrupts our
framework of meaning violently

Clearing our mind
 To let life shine through us we need to clear our
minds and our daily existence.
 Know when to be open and when to be closed
 Processing that which opposes us and muddies
the water and work with each other to make
sense of the non sensical

We need something to
believe in

Restoring harmony and
purpose leads to restoration
of meaning

Psychosis: frozen meanings
(me and mom are one)

Restoring meaning
 Physically: safety and a sense of the body’s
harmony and peace in relation to nature
 Socially: loving acceptance and appreciation by
a person and a group
 Personally: identifying inner strength and
vulnerability with integrity
 Spiritually: connecting with truth, the universe
and a sense of purpose

Discovering what
matters

Life is about learning

Making meaning in time
 Past meanings
 Present meanings
 Future meanings
 Eternal meanings

Where are we?
 Where is God and what is transcendence?
 Morality and ethics
 Death and the beyond
 Role of religious rituals and the sacred
 Integration of metaphysics and science
 One dimensional materialism, nihilism

The quieter you become
the more you are able to hear
Rumi
 Re-establish peace, calm and willingness to listen shows up
hidden meaning

Nihilism: killing God
 But how have we done this? How were we able
to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to
wipe away the entire horizon? (Nietzsche 1882:
125)

Worldview and ideology
Polytheism:
Many Gods
Monotheism:
One God
Marxism:
Society as God
Psychology:
Individual as
God
Atheism: No
God
Science:
Facts are
God
Humanism:
Mankind as
God
Agnosticism:
Don’t know
God
Pantheism: All
is God

What is your own idea of
transcendence?

Quantum entanglement
 UNI Geneva 1997
 Photon split in two , particles separated by 14 miles
 Despite distance particles reacted same to external stimuli
 Spin one with magnetic force, the other will spin too
 Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance’
 No communication, but part of same energetic field
 Matter spread over huge distance but entangled at
quantum level

New perspectives:
life as an adventure and
discovery
 Learning to be you and living life well

Facebook and LinkedIn: Existential Therapy
www.slideshare.com

Loving your Life
 Loving your fate and destiny in all its
manifestations
 (Nietzsche’s Amor Fati)

How to create value in
life?
 Through committed and engaged action
 Step by step
 Diligently proceeding no matter what challenges
come on your path
 Steady progress comes from undaunted focus
on your project
 Flexibility and finding joy in the process rather
than aiming for success or happiness

trusting

What is Love: the
creation of meaningful
connection

How do we become disconnected
to fall into our inner abyss of
isolation?

Love is learnt
 Nietzsche in Joyful Wisdom:
 One must learn to love. This is our
experience in music: we must first learn to
hear, to hear fully and to distinguish a theme
for a melody, we have to isolate and limit it
as a life by itself; then we need to exercise
effort and good will in order to endure it in
spite of its strangeness…

Love transforms us
When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how
imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for
love.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. 1847.

 “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in
looking outward together in the same direction.”

Existential philosophy and psychotherapy at the Weekend UNi 2018

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